At a recent lecture on planning and urban design at the London School of Economics, with Mohsen Mostafavi (Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Design) and chaired by Richard Sennett, it was good to see continued momentum of acknowledgement of the existing situation of our living environment as a starting point (which seems to be a relatively new phenomenon in the main). However, with all the human activity implicit within that, human activity itself, generally, seems little discussed.
Is it possible that the human is the elephant in the room?
If human activity, with its concomitant implications and necessities, sits at the crossroads of the constituting strands of our living environments, how can human (with plant and animal) activity be made more explicit (and central if the above assertion is true)?
Putting human activity at the centre of consideration is in some ways a conceit; whilst it can be interpreted as an arrogance, indeed a root of the problem that we do not factor in the rest of the planet on at least an equal standing, it is at the same time apparent that an acknowledgement of the necessity of recognising this existing situation leads to more implicit consideration that it is the nature and implications of human behaviour that needs to be mitigated. However, acknowledging the considerations of human activity as central, does not necessarily lead to an holistic representation of our overall living environment, but more of how we may begin to think about living as more responsible human beings.
Actively human
Whist human activity, with its concomitant implications of activity, may dominate the planet, this does not alleviate the need to be responsible for the results and implications of our actions, which is apparently the case currently – therein lies the conceit. Moreover, that is all the more reason why a more harmonious and integrated manner of existence needs to be achieved.
Can there be a place for a renewed sense of altruism; an evolved sense of the civic? If so, what would be the nature of it, and how would it manifest?
There will be no magic or instantaneous solution, more likely a gradual but definite and significant change in behaviours, stemming from an increasing shift in perspective away from that of ignorance and selfish greed as a resultant aspiration of our modes of living.
The diagram below, which is in some ways no more than a platitudinal statement, is warranted by the apparent need that certain basic positions need re-stating.
click to enlarge
- Spatio-physical:
streetscape; building; square
- Spatio-temporal:
transport (infrastructure); development phasing; neighbourhood evolution; daily/ weekly/ seasonal/ annual cycles; time passing/ strolling – realm of the flaneur
- Socio-environmental:
ecology, food, waste, energy, water - more cyclical, less linear
- Socio-economic:
social infrastructure; community; economic activity; bartering; community currency
Interlude
If buildings are merely nested containers of activity - a sequence of envelopes - so merely a series of thin thresholds with different functions: some to divide activities, some to provide acoustic division, some to provide transition and some to provide shelter, the outer shell can be thought of as mid-hierarchy and mid-spatial (between activities happening 'inside' and 'outside'), then the notion of building as an object is dissolved. With activity as first in the hierarchy of considerations, function second, building as ‘object’ sits third, emerges an evolved basis for consideration of how we affect how and where we live.
Social and economic sustainability should be considered as a twin primary strand to more usual spatio-physical based design work of new neighbourhoods, but particularly of regeneration. Human activities and their implications need to be the basis and driver for that spatio-physical design based work that should flow from that socio-economic understanding. Healthy socio-economics is surely the ‘fuel’ and ‘lubricant’ that makes neighbourhoods run smoothly.
Turn around
We often hear the now platitude that ‘half the world live in urban areas’, but this leaves some three billion people in a ‘rural’ situation. Moreover, this is usually portrayed with an underlying tone that being urban necessarily represents progression. But what is the quality of most people’s life in this urban situation? The shanty town/ favela seems to be the biggest growth area of urban typology, when often they go un-recognised by local municipalities, so lack basic utilities and services, and their rights dismissed once areas are ripe for redevelopment. How often does redevelopment become genuine regeneration?
If the intensity of human behaviour at large scales is at least a partial cause of un-sustainable practices, then, rather than trying to explore ways to resolve the exodus to the cities, could we address the issues at cause, rather than try to resolve the symptoms?
Could rural areas become more a focus for consideration, in that they could be a way to:
- stem movement to city, so relieving pressure on physical and social infrastructure;
- take people closer to agriculture rather than inserting that into city;
- provide an alternative to bluntly 'densifying' and making more compact;
- shift the balance between rural and urban towards more cyclical practices and better integration between the two.
Although, the danger is that we just carry existing bad practices to more places.
This is not about ‘down-shifting’, retiring early or escaping the ‘rat race’, but reinvigorating places that currently often struggle to maintain critical mass for basic services and amenities, so that the range of viable places to live is generally broadened.
Conclusion
Whilst exploring innovation through dialectic consideration and analysis of the existing situation, and implications of conceptual utopian ideas is laudable, the utopian alone is dangerous. We are still dealing with the inter-generational deprivation fallout of well intentioned utopian housing estates from half a century ago.
[Ironically, it seems the root of word utopian means non-place: The word comes from the Greek: οὐ ("not") and τόπος ("place"). The English homophone eutopia, derived from the Greek εὖ ("good" or "well") and τόπος ("place"), signifies a double meaning: "good place" and "no place" - Wiki]
The difficulty is really how to get from the existing to the proposed, as viable proposals emerge. But using scales of intervention (time and spatial) as a design tool means living environments undergoing change through gradual morphing including programme and activity, not just from physical (utopian) objectives.
See also:
Id of the Ingenu
June 2010 – Galería FAR; Out in the Country
How to invigorate struggling rural economies
August 2010 – The Art of Nesting
‘Bringing art to the masses’
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